A dark room with ambient lighting. A cozy corner bathed in sunlight. Decorative coffee cups and delicious desserts. The Crossing, located on West C Street across from the Train Depot, offers all of this and more.

“When we first opened it, we weren’t sure exactly what it would look like, mostly because there’s never been anything in Russellville specifically like this,” Billy Reeder, the self-titled sidekick to manager Paula Reeder, said. “We wanted it to be good for the community. In that respect, it is where we wanted it to be.”

On April 20, 2012, The Crossing opened its doors. The goal was to create a coffee shop that gave back to the community. One year later, The Crossing has surpassed expectations.

“It’s grown a whole lot,” Clarissa Shonk, daytime manager at The Crossing, said. “The original hours were just on weekends, then we went to weekdays, now we’ve added open mic night and karaoke night.”

The Crossing offers live music on Friday and Saturday nights. The artists are usually local, but as word of the shop has grown, other artists have contacted them asking to come and play.

“We have a huge demographic,” Shonk said. “People come in with their families, they bring little kids, high school, junior high kids ... A lot of people thought we would have a college demographic, but they’re really not as big a part of it as you would expect, it’s really a little of everybody.”

“It’s been recieved well by the whole community,” Reeder said.

The Crossing sells coffee along with desserts and other food items. One of the main focal points of the shop is the Giving Wall, which has jars representing different local nonprofit organizations.

“We’ve had lots of people turn in applications to get on the wall,” Shonk said. “We rotate the organizations that are on the wall so everybody gets a chance.”

When a specialty drink is ordered, a dollar is given back in play money to be placed in one of the jars. Fifty cents is given back when food is ordered.

“The Giving Wall was really the basis of it,” Shonk said. “People like the idea of giving back. They like the hands-on activity of choosing where to give it to.”

The Giving Wall has worked as planned, raising money for different causes.

“We just cleared the $10,000 mark which, was our goal for the first year,” Reeder said.

Along with the ability to give back to the community, The Crossing offers a relaxing place to go.

“I like it because it’s a Christian environment and it’s a quiet place I can have coffee with my friends,” Marcia Monk said. The Crossing is an outreach project of the Wesley United Methodist Church. The shop has church service Sundays at 7 p.m.

“The most risky venture to go into is opening up a restaurant,” Reeder said. “The great thing about The Crossing is that we keep growing and get a little a busier each month.”

“I knew nothing about coffee a year ago,” Shonk said. “None of us really did, we’ve learned a lot.”